Rogue Theories of Transsexualism

[Kate Thomas]

Lynn Conway puts together number of theories in this paper.
the relatively recent dates makes it a bit unsetteling.

Kate



Rogue Theories of Transsexualism:

By seeing a collection of such theories side-by-side, we grasp the strangeness of them all.

Lynn Conway
June 18, 2006
<a few selected sinps>
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Rogue%20Theories/Rogue%20Theories.html

1.   It's 'Gender Envy':

As proposed by Psychiatrist Fred Oremland, in 1973.
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2.  It's either 'Extreme homosexuality' or 'Transvestic Fetishism': 

Proclaimed by psychoanalyst Jon Meyer and Catholic psychiatrist Paul McHugh of Johns Hopkins, in 1977 (and later re-claimed by McHugh in  2004, in his reflections on that work in a Catholic Religious magazine).

Paul McHugh has been on a rampage to "stop sex changes" ever since the early-1970's. When he became psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, he engaged in a vendetta against its gender program and succeeded in shutting down the surgeries there. Later as advisor to the Vatican on sexual matters, he was behind the Catholic Church's later official pronouncement in 2000 that "transsexualism doesn't exist". McHugh and the Church now declare it to be a "madness" instead.  McHugh is now influential in the current U.S. administration as a member of the President's Council on Bioethics.  And in 2005 the IRS disallowed a woman's tax deduction for SRS, citing McHugh's teachings in a Catholic religious magazine as a basis for the government's decision.

 

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3.   It's caused by "evil spirits" (aka "possession by the devil"), and is curable by exorcism:

Proclaimed by psychiatrists David H. Barlow, Gene G. Abel and Edward B. Blanchard, in an article entitled "Gender Identity Change in a Transsexual: An Exorcism" published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior in 1977

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Why is it that such theories of transsexualism are inevitably defamatory towards trans women, and are put forward with an air of total certainty, without a shred of solid empirical evidence behind them?  And how can this be done without any hesitation, shame or remorse?

[Kate]

...and are put forward with an air of total certainty, without a shred of solid empirical evidence behind them?  And how can this be done without any hesitation, shame or remorse?

To be fair, we do it too

We have no solid, scientifically accepted evidence that TSism is anything more than an odd psychological quirk. We ASSUME it's biological somehow, but we really don't know. The "incomplete hormonal bath when in the womb" theory is always mentioned as if it's accepted fact, when it's really just a good guess. Nor does it explain f2ms very well.

But just as the bigots have an agenda to invalidate our condition, it often seems we have a need to justify it.